Are GOP Voters Reality-Based?

New York Times columnist David Brooks, in an opinion piece
yesterday, correctly reported that "The Republican Party is the party of
the white working class.This group -- whites with high school degrees
and maybe some college -- is still the largest block in the electorate.
They overwhelmingly favor Republicans." Brooks further observed that
white-working class "members generally share certain beliefs and
experiences. The economy has been moving away from them. The ethnic
makeup of the country is shifting away from them. They sense that the
nation has gone astray: marriage is in crisis; the work ethic is
eroding; living standards are in danger; the elites have failed; the
news media sends out messages that make it harder to raise decent kids.
They face greater challenges, and they're on their own."
Brooks' solution to this disconnect between the GOP's elite and its base was to recommend the kind
of politics espoused by Rick Santorum who, because of his alleged
working class-background and strong family and communitarian values,
Brooks claimed, would strike a resonant chord among members of this
neglected but essential GOP constituency.

As
a self-described "conservative," Brooks' endorsement of Santorum's
working class values needs to be viewed within the broader context of
GOP political rhetoric. While campaigning in Iowa, Newt Gingrich accused
Mitt Romney of being a "Massachusetts moderate" while Romney himself
depicted President Barack Obama as someone who wanted to destroy this
country's "free enterprise" system with its values of hard work and
individual advancement and replace it with a "European entitlement
system." Simultaneously, Santorum, Bachmann, Perry and Paul all
expressed concerns that the U.S. was in danger of metamorphosing into
some kind of socialism state that, because of oppressive government
regulation, was strangling economic productivity.

All of this rhetoric, of course, diverts attention from the real
problems of this country: A dysfunctional political system dominated by a
wealthy elite, their lobbyists and enablers; and an economy that,
because of the out-sourcing of American jobs and manufacturing,
restrictions on the ability of employees to unionize and bargain for
higher wages, "free trade," increasing automation, extraordinary
economic inequality, and declining levels of education and literacy,
among a multitude of other problems, have caused the incomes of most
Americans to stagnate or decline since the 1970s.

As
the magnitude of social, political and economic problems has increased
over the past decades in the United States, the dysjunction between
reality and political rhetoric has grown wider and the rhetoric more
hysterical. Exit polls from the Iowa Republican caucus, for example,
revealed that almost six of every ten voters considered themselves to be
evangelicals or born-again Christians and were concerned about social
values, while only three out of every ten voters thought that the
economy was the most important issue bedeviling the country.

The preoccupation of GOP voters with social and moral values, as
opposed to economic concerns, once again illustrates the phenomenon of
"false consciousness" identified by Karl Marx and most recently
chronicled by Historian Thomas Franks in his book, "What's The Matter With Kansas?"
The determination of predominantly working-class white males and their
female counterparts to consistently support politicians and issues
diametrically opposed to their own economic interests forecloses the
possibility of any serious civic dialog. It also provides a sobering
commentary that calls into question the ability of this country's
political system to address, in a meaningful way, any of our real
problems.

If Mitt Romney can be viewed as a moderate
and Barack Obama is a socialist, then the evangelicals may very well be
right: The apocalypse is at hand. Rather than provide a spiritual
transformation, however, it may instead signify, in the lyrics of P. F.
Sloan, that we are "on the eve of destruction."